


What Lies Beneath

by orphan_account



Category: X-Men (Movieverse)
Genre: Amnesia, Angst, Fix-It, M/M, Post-Cuba, Telepathy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-11-04
Updated: 2017-11-20
Packaged: 2019-01-29 09:32:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,948
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12628047
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: “Funny helmet that you’re using,” Charles says. “A bit late for Halloween, don’t you think? And what are you dressing as, anyway? A superhero? I don’t know this one.”Mystique chokes down a laugh, beside him, and even Erik fights a smile.“I am Charles, owner of the place. You look like you need something to drink - and eat. Here,” he says, handing them the menu.In which second chances lie in a - figurative - death.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This does not follow the events of the movies after XMFC. I took some liberties, and a few characters from the first X-Men trilogy appear here, because fuck chronology.

In the end, it is Azazel who says it, who finally speaks the suggestion aloud. The idea has been on Mystique’s mind for months, however.

“From all you’ve told about your brother, he seems to be appropriate to take care of Kurt.”

Yes. Charles is. Mystique knows that. Accepting it, however, means that she will need to go to Westchester, and see Charles, and… it’s been three years since she last saw him, left him, actually.

But, she needs to do what is right for her son and for herself. She won’t leave the Brotherhood, she believes in what they do, but it isn’t a place to raise a child. And Charles, for all that he has hurt her, made her feel unaccepted, will protect Kurt with his own life, if needed. And, if he has another mutation, any power beyond his appearance, Charles will be able to help him.

Maybe, she thinks, Kurt will grow up an idealistic fool - Magneto’s words - like his uncle, but even that is a price worth paying to keep him safe. And Azazel and she will visit him whenever possible, Charles will not deny them this right.

Azazel is right, Charles is the appropriate choice. The only choice, actually.

“You’re right. He will take good care of Kurt,” Mystique says, nodding and hugging Kurt to her chest. “I will go there on the next week, you should come with me. And we should inform Magneto about it.”

“I must go now. Emma summoned me earlier, it appears that she and Angel found something about the Trask man.”

“Really? Yes, you should go. We will be fine.”

Azazel nods, plants a kiss on her forehead and another on Kurt’s before leaving in a curtain of smoke and sulfur.

She looks at Kurt, whose eyes are starting to drop, and smiles. For the first time in months she feels happiness that goes beyond the bundle in her arms. Yes, it will be hell to face Charles after three years, part of her is ashamed… but, but she will see him, and that’s what matters.

“You will like Charles, Kurt. He is not blue as we are, but his eyes are the bluest shade and…”

She doesn’t notice that she is crying until a tear falls on Kurt’s nose. He blinks, as if paying attention to her words. “Yes, you’ll like him. Everyone likes him.”

On the next day, she goes and talks to Magneto about leaving Kurt with Charles. He says nothing at all, and only nods at her when she says that it is the best course of action.

* * *

 

All preparation in the world did not really prepare Mystique to face her brother again. Part of her is sure that Charles will, in the end, welcome her with open arms. That they will be able to avoid too much awkwardness… but the other part whispers, insidiously, that it’s been three years, and she has no idea of how much Charles has changed.

Azazel teleports them to the gates of the mansion, and they walk the rest, giving Charles time to feel their presence before they knock on the door. She feels nothing on her mind, and Azazel does not report anything either.

“Come on, Charles,” she whispers, and then notices that she wants him on her mind, even if only this one time.

They walk all the way to the house, and there is no sign of Charles’ telepathy, but at least he has not told them to go away either. The last steps to the door are the hardest, and knocking is even worse.

“Coming!” they hear someone yelling from inside. It’s Alex, she thinks.

The door is opened, and Alex looks at them for one second before trying to shut the door on their faces. He is stopped by Azazel, who holds the door.

“What the fuck are you doing here, Raven? And him?” he shouted. “You know what? I don’t wanna know. Just get the hell out of here.”

“I want to speak to Charles,” Mystique says, and forgets to correct him and say that that’s not her name. “I have the right.”

Alex laughs humorlessly, “Right? So you think you’ve got a right to talk to him, huh?” He opened the door and made an exaggerated gesture for them to enter. “Only you. He doesn’t enter here.”

“He needs to speak with Charles too. It’s about our… son,” she finishes, and for the first time Alex seems to notice the child in her arms. “Please.” she asks because she does know that right now, he has more rights in this house than she does, and honestly, she does not want to fight.

“Is it only the two of you? Is Erik with you?” Mystique shakes her head. “The diamond bitch?”

“It’s only us!” Mystique snaps.

“What is going on here?” It is Hank that asks it, while he arrives to the room. “Raven,” he says, looking a bit shocked. Then he looks at Azazel, and his expression closes off. “What is he doing here?”

“We need to talk to Charles.”

“Yes, Hank. They want to talk to Charles,” Alex says, giving the other mutant a meaningful look.

“But…” Hank starts to say, but is interrupted.

“I’ll take them to Charles, right,” then Alex looks at Mystique and Azazel, “you won’t even need to enter the house, actually. Charles is outside, I’ll take you to him.”

“Alex, don’t,” Hank protests.

“Let me deal with this, Hank.”

Alex gets out and closes the door behind him with more force than necessary. Mystique glares at him when Kurt stirs in her arms.

The day is cold, and she wonders what the hell is Charles doing outside. He’s never been the type…

“What is he doing?” she asks, not really confident that Alex will reply. Something tells her that this was all too easy, that there is some catch.

“You’ll see,” Alex replies and starts to walk in front of them, quickly, in long strides.

Mystique knows where they are going, it is the backyard. They could have gone inside the house and used the kitchen door, but she supposes that Alex wanted to see them walk in the cold.

They walk for a few minutes, the grounds of the mansion are extensive, after all. They walk past a few trees in the backyard, and then, then she notices where they are going.

“No,” she whispers.

“Figured out, did you?” Alex says, looking at her with sadness and anger.

She grabs Azazel’s hand with one of hers and holds Kurt closer to her chest with the other. She starts to tremble, and to hyperventilate.

“Alex!” she calls. “Please tell me…”

Tell me it’s not...

But Alex looks at her and shakes his head.

They arrive at the small graveyard located in the back. Some of the members of the family - past generations - are buried there. Their parents are there as well. Mystique is frozen, Azazel at her side, while Alex keeps walking, until he stops in front of a tomb.

“This is where Charles is.” Alex says pointing out to the tomb.

Mystique gives Kurt to Azazel and runs to the tomb. She needs to see… maybe, maybe it is all a joke because Alex hates them and…

No.

She can see a marble plate with Charles’ photo, his date of birth and of death, the latter, she sees, happened more than two years ago. A few months after Cuba.

A few months after Erik put a bullet on Charles’ spine.

“Was it… was it the bullet?”

“Yes, you could say that. You should talk to Hank if you want to know more about it,” Alex says, his voice cold, and face looking as if he’s enjoying this.

“Okay… I-I need to go now. I can’t stay here any longer. Take us out of here, Azazel,” she asks, walking toward the teleporter. “I need to get out of here.”

* * *

 

Charles doesn’t remember how he’d come to own a restaurant. He doesn’t remember many things, actually… but this does not stop him from doing a good job, living a satisfying life. However, in days like this, when he feels like his “past” life has secrets buried beneath, it is harder. There is a restlessness inside him, and it feels like a bubble that grows and grows until it explodes, exposing all the secrets.

But really, Charles supposes that the worst that could have happened before he lost his memories was that he was a bore of a person. Sometimes, though, and he doesn’t share that with anyone, his imagination grows wings and flies to unexpected places.

Maybe he didn’t pay his taxes… or maybe he was involved in contraband of alcohol and tobacco. Maybe he sold a kidney in the black market. Or bought one…

“Focus, Charles,” he whispers and brings a hand to his temple.

He does not know why he does that, and sometimes the gesture brings him memories of dreams - because they can only be dreams.

Charles wheels himself to the door of the restaurant, and he turns the sign “open” to the outside. In a few minutes Marie will be here to help him, and he will lose himself in work, and it will chase away his curiosity.

For some reason, the phrase “ignorance is bliss” keeps coming to his mind, and Charles always decides to believe it.


	2. Chapter 2

Erik is revising some intel that Emma managed to get when Azazel and Mystique come back. It all went faster than he’d predicted. Perhaps Charles wasn’t so friendly, after all. A few seconds after he’s heard the sound of Azazel teleportation, he hears the voice of Mystique, shouting.

  
“No, you let me go, Azazel. Don’t fucking touch me. Let me go, Azazel. I will rip him apart.”

  
Erik is on his feet in a heartbeat. He uses his power to open the door, and Mystique is already coming toward him. Azazel is holding their baby - wasn’t he supposed to be with Charles, now? Apparently, it all went worse than he’d imagined.

  
Mystique takes some steps and then she starts to run toward him. Azazel teleports away, and then comes back, without the baby. He touches Mystique’s shoulder and teleports away again.

  
“What?” Erik asks no one. He extends his powers, looking for any piece of metal that could indicate where Azazel and Mystique are.

  
Azazel comes back a few seconds later.  
“What has happened?” Erik asks. “Where is Mystique?”

  
Azazel eyes him for a few moments, seeming to collect his thoughts.

  
“Mystique’s brother is dead.”

  
Erik almost flinches. He blinks a few times, comprehending, but not understanding what the teleporter has just said.

  
“He’s been dead for some time,” Azazel continues, after some moments. “The boy who told us this also said that the… bullet… at Cuba,” he hesitates, “is what caused the death. More or less. We didn’t really stay to have more information.”

  
But… Charles didn’t seem that bad when they left. He was talking, he was lucid enough to refuse to come with Erik, lucid enough to blame him for the shot that was fired by the human. If Erik had suspected that...

  
“Mystique wants to, in her own words, rip you apart,” he says with a smirk. “I didn’t find it wise to let her try.”

  
Erik turns around, returns to his own room and shuts the door brusquely. In his mind, only three words fly by, accusingly.

  
Charles is dead.

  
He repeats those words again and again, until they sink in. When reality really hits, though, Erik denies it. He feels just like he felt years and years ago, when Shaw had killed his mother.

  
Mama can’t be dead.

  
And then Erik notices that his hands are shaking and all the metal in the room - and in the whole house, he feels it - is trembling as well. He lets grief turn into rage and then, then he lets that rage flow, using his powers as a conduit. He crushes every metal piece that his power touches. Someone shrieks - one of the other Brotherhood member, Erik doesn’t particularly care who.

  
Charles can’t be dead.

  
Since when has Charles been dead? Why haven’t those three boys told anything? Who do they think they are to hide something like that?

  
But… Azazel said that they didn’t have the whole story. This could be a lie. Maybe created by Charles, or by the others… although it is unlikely that they would be able to hide something like that from a telepath.

  
There isn’t hesitation in the next decision Erik makes, he simply calls Azazel and orders him to take them back to Westchester.

  
They reappear in the gates of Charles’ mansion.

  
“When we were here before, the boy took us to a graveyard. There was a tomb, Magneto. With inscriptions and all.”

  
Erik glares at him, but asks Azazel to take him to see the tomb, then.

  
And it is true - or at least, it seems to be - the tomb has a marble plate with Charles’ picture and the dates of birth and death. He sees, then, that it didn’t happen long after Cuba. Automatically, his mind goes back to those days, and he wonders what he was doing then, when Charles was dying. That is an useless train of thought, though.

  
Looking away from the tomb, Erik can see one lonely figure walking the path back to the house. He recognizes it as Alex, and remembers that everything - Mystique and Azazel coming back, the revelation told by the teleporter, and his own impulse to come here - happened in just a few minutes.  
Reaching with his powers, he searches for any metal that Alex might be using, but there is none. He’s not wearing a belt or a clock, anything to pull him and demand answers.

  
Maybe, Erik briefly thinks, having answers will be worse. Azazel already told him that the bullet was the cause…

  
Erik looks again at the tomb, at Charles’ picture. He’s smiling in it, and he wonders when the picture was taken.

  
_Before you got into his life_ , a voice whispers.

* * *

 

Charles is having a headache. Headaches are not uncommon for him, but a very constant presence on his life, at least since the accident. He asked more than one doctor about that, and none of them said that the pain was necessarily connected to the lesion on his spine…

  
Fleetingly, he considers trying to look for relatives to ask them if it was something he had before, but oddly, the thought escapes his mind just as it comes. He doesn’t want to know. Something tells him that he should just leave the past where it belongs. Besides, he knows that his immediate family is dead, anyway.

  
He has some clues about what he was before, though. Just last week a group of teenages was complaining about not knowing damned Genetics. Charles heard them complaining for some time, they talked about alleles and pleiotropy and about quantitative inheritance. In the middle of listening to their complaints, he stopped and realized that all of that was just basic Genetics. It was nothing on complex phenotypes, and clearly those children had no idea about how fascinating the subject was!

  
So, Charles approached their table and started to talk about how they should approach the subject to effectively learn it, while teaching them the elemental points of it. He only noticed what was happening when it ended. The teens thanked him profusely afterward.

  
Whatever had happened before, he apparently knew Genetics.

  
“Charles!” Marie calls, pulling him out of his reverie.

  
“I’m here,” he says, and continues to work on peeling off potatoes.

  
Marie is… peculiar. Charles hasn’t pried, but he knows that she has a secret. She almost always wears gloves, and never ever touches somebody without them. Come to think of it, she doesn’t seem to ever let any part of uncovered skin touch other people. He won’t ask why, but he has speculated a lot. She doesn’t speak of friends or of a significant other, neither of any family. But she is trustworthy. He doesn’t know how he can tell this, but he trusts his instincts blindly. Besides, Marie at least knows who she is, and it’s not like Charles can guarantee that he has always been decent…  
You shouldn’t think about such things.

* * *

 

She looks at the mirror and turns into the blonde form that she used to wear. Raven, a name that she’d left behind in a beach in Cuba, or that’s what she’d tried to tell herself. Deep inside, she always knew that he would be waiting for Raven to return, and maybe part of her hoped to one day be that girl again, even if only for a fleeting moment.  
But now, Charles is gone, and she is lost.

Not Raven, not Mystique, just someone hurting. Just a bundle of memories that persist, mocking and accusing.

  
Kurt will not know Charles…

  
And Charles would have loved Kurt, independently of anything else.

  
Would-have-beens are the most painful reminder of the desires that never happened.

  
Closing her eyes, she takes another form. She is not brave enough to open them, and she takes her natural form again.

  
The sadness goes back to rage. Not the consuming and explosive one, but a burning one nonetheless. Azazel had said yesterday that Magneto had been… wrecked. Or what passes for that for him, anyway.

That just marginally comforts her.

  
She doesn’t want to kill him anymore - she knows how stupid that would be, - but she can’t bear the sight of him, and neither knows what she want from him anymore.  
Lost, as she already knows.

Maybe that means something...


End file.
